Friday, April 25, 2014

Will the Brennan Center Hire Lois Lerner Next?

The Brennan Center for Justice describes itself as “a
nationally recognized powerhouse for research and activism in the fields of
campaign finance and election reform.” A
more neutral reading would be that the Brennan Center for Justice is known for
their partisan efforts on voting and their poorly
sourced studies on vote fraud related issues such as voter ID. The Brennan Center’s current and former employees while paying
lip service in reality even oppose reform efforts such as those proposed by the bipartisan
Presidential Commission on Election Administration on topics such as list maintenance.

A new
study by the Capitol Research Center scratches the surface of these and
other problems and is worth checking out.
One line from that study shocked me (emphasis added).

The Brennan Center for
Justice at NYU is currently headed by Michael Waldman, who served as director
of speech writing for President Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1999. Previously he
was special assistant to the president for policy coordination from 1993 to
1995. In this role he was the top White
House policy aide on campaign finance reform and claims credit for drafting the
Clinton administration’s public financing proposal.

Are you kidding me?
Clinton’s top aide on campaign finance reform claiming credit and leading
a group, any group, which talks about campaign finance reform is like putting
Lois Lerner in charge of a group for fair treatment of 501c4 groups. (Maybe Brennan will hire her next.)

For those who do not remember, liberals and conservatives agree that President Clinton was one
of the worst Presidents in history on campaign finance issues. During the 1996 campaign there were so many problems
that even the New York Times, which
regarded this as a top issue, had to report negatively on the Clinton Administration. Of course, the New York Times waited until November and December of 1996, after
Clinton had been re-elected for the bulk of their reporting. While the
scathing and lengthy editorial taking the Clinton Administration to task on
campaign finance is no longer available online, some of the reporting of it
is. Here are a few paragraphs from a
typical New
York Times story post the 1996 election.

In the ornate Map Room of
the White House residence, with Vice President Al Gore at his side, President
Clinton assembled his most senior advisers for an important budget meeting. It
was not the Federal budget that was being considered, but the budget of the
Democratic National Committee.

As controversy has grown
over Democratic fund raising, Mr. Clinton has sought to distinguish between the
practices of his own re-election campaign and those of the Democratic
committee. But the Map Room meeting is just one example of how closely the
committee worked with the White House.

In the frenzy, a small group
of Democratic fund-raisers and donors amassed questionable, and, in some cases
unlawful, contributions, some from Asian sources, that have left the White
House and the Democratic Party embroiled in controversy and facing a new round
of hearings from a Republican-controlled Congress.

But this year Mr. Clinton
relentlessly used all the perks and power of incumbency to raise money, according
to both his aides and campaign finance experts. And White House and party
officials met weekly to go over money goals and determine where the President
would be needed to appear.

The Clinton Administration often talked about campaign
finance reform but in reality their actions were all about winning political
races for Democrats at all costs and any fundraising means. I guess Waldman makes sense as a leader of
the Brennan Center as that seems to be the Brennan Center’s mission as
well.